MALIBU, Calif. -- This weekend, straight ally and ten-time Olympian swimmer Gary Hall Jr. will swim to raise awareness for LGBT Equality, advocacy organization Equality California announced today.

The swim, which takes place Saturday, Sept 24, 2011, starting at 9 am, is a 1.7 mile open-water swim, and Hall will join 30 other swimmers as they make their way through the surf from Malibu's Tower 1 to the Zuma Lifeguard Headquarters.

Each swimmer or team has committed to raising a minimum of $2000 per person to benefit Equality California.

WASHINGTON — Finding out that 1st Lt. Josh Seefried is gay won’t be a shock to most of his co-workers at Joint Base McGuire-Dix-Lakehurst in New Jersey. He has already come out to some of them, and dropped not-so-subtle hints for others.

But now that the "Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell" law barring openly gay troops from serving in the military has been repealed, even some close friends who know Seefried’s personal life will be stunned to find out that he has an even bigger secret.

A Mexican lawyer and gay activist is facing 14 months in prison for defending a victim of homophobia. In 2009 Jaime López Vela was physically assaulted and then arrested and charged with "insult to police and obstruction on the road" by police in the State of Mexico (in South-Central Mexico) on the orders of State authorities.

The murder of a gay activist in Kisumu, Kenya's third largest city in Western Kenya, underlines the climate of threat and hostility in which local LGBT exist, activists say.